North Carolina Car Accident Settlement Calculator
Estimate a car accident settlement under North Carolina law. The calculator applies this jurisdiction's own comparative fault rule and damages ceilings, and every figure below is the one our verified data holds, with the statute behind it and the date we checked it.
What North Carolina law does to your claim
Three things in state law open a gap between two identical injuries in two different states: how long you have to file, what happens if you were partly at fault, and whether the state puts a ceiling on what a jury can award. Here is what we hold for this one.
North Carolina applies contributory negligence. Any plaintiff fault bars recovery.
North Carolina common law; Smith v. Fiber Controls Corp., 300 N.C. 669 (1980)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1D-25·Last reviewed 2026-07-30
None on record means our verified data holds no figure of this kind for this state. It is not a finding that no limit could apply to your claim.
North Carolina car insurance law: minimums, PIP and uninsured motorist coverage
What North Carolina's provisions say about the insurance behind a car accident claim, in their own words, with the copy read named under each.
North Carolina: Minimum liability coverage
“[…] subject to limits exclusive of interest and costs, with respect to each such motor vehicle, as follows: fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) because of bodily injury to or death of one person in any one accident and, subject to said limit for one person, one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) because of bodily injury to or death of two or more persons in any one accident, and fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) because of injury to or destruction of property of others in any one accident; […]”
The provision begins before this quote and continues past its end, and neither part is quoted here.
A minimum is a floor on what a policy must carry. It is not a limit on what a claim is worth, and it does not tell you what the at-fault driver carries.
The General Assembly's page prints two versions of subsection (b), one headed "(Effective until July 1, 2025)" and one headed "(Effective July 1, 2025)". The quotes here are from the second. How the change applies to a policy already in force on July 1, 2025 is not stated in the text read.
North Carolina: No-fault, personal injury protection and the right to sue
No personal injury protection requirement, and no limit on a suit for pain and suffering, was found in the provisions read for this page (N.C.G.S. § 20-279.21).
North Carolina: Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage
“No policy of bodily injury liability insurance, covering liability arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or use of any motor vehicle, shall be delivered or issued for delivery in this State with respect to any motor vehicle registered or principally garaged in this State unless coverage is provided therein or supplemental thereto, under provisions filed with and approved by the Commissioner of Insurance, for the protection of persons insured thereunder who are legally entitled to recover damages from owners or operators of uninsured motor vehicles and hit-and-run motor vehicles because of bodily injury, sickness or disease, including death, resulting therefrom. The limits of such uninsured motorist bodily injury coverage shall be equal to the highest limits of bodily injury liability coverage for any one vehicle insured under the policy; provided, however, that (i) the limits shall not exceed one million dollars ($1,000,000) per person and one million dollars ($1,000,000) per accident regardless of whether the highest limits of bodily injury liability coverage for any one vehicle insured under the policy exceed those limits and (ii) a named insured may purchase greater or lesser limits, except that the limits shall not be less than the bodily injury liability limits required pursuant to subdivision (2) of this subsection, […]”
The provision continues past the end of this quote, and the rest is not quoted here.
“Shall, in addition to the coverages set forth in subdivisions (2) and (3) of this subsection, provide underinsured motorist coverage. The limits of such underinsured motorist bodily injury coverage shall be equal to the highest limits of bodily injury liability coverage for any one vehicle insured under the policy; provided, however, that (i) the limits shall not exceed one million dollars ($1,000,000) per person and one million dollars ($1,000,000) per accident regardless of whether the highest limits of bodily injury liability coverage for any one vehicle insured under the policy exceed those limits, (ii) a named insured may purchase greater or lesser limits, and in no event shall an insurer be required by this subdivision to sell underinsured motorist bodily injury coverage at limits that exceed one million dollars ($1,000,000) per person and one million dollars ($1,000,000) per accident, and (iii) the limits shall be equal to the limits of uninsured motorist bodily injury coverage purchased pursuant to subdivision (3) of this subsection.”
The General Assembly's page prints two versions of subsection (b), one headed "(Effective until July 1, 2025)" and one headed "(Effective July 1, 2025)". The quotes here are from the second. How the change applies to a policy already in force on July 1, 2025 is not stated in the text read.
North Carolina: Medical payments coverage
No medical payments coverage requirement was found in the provisions read for this page (N.C.G.S. § 20-279.21).
What partial fault costs you in North Carolina
The same claim, fracture with surgery, several months of recovery, run through the calculator above four times, with nothing changed but the share of fault assigned to the claimant. The numbers are the engine's output, not an editorial claim about what these cases are worth.
One case, run through the calculator above four times with only the claimant's share of fault changed, under North Carolina law. No coverage ceiling is applied, because we would be inventing the at-fault party's policy. These shares illustrate the rule; they are not an estimate of your own fault.
Every North Carolina deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the North Carolina periods in our verified data, with the statute behind each one. A deadline is the outside limit, never a target, and other rules can shorten it.
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-52(16)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorN.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-15(c)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorN.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-53(4)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorN.C. Gen. Stat. § 97-24·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorN.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-52(16)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorNorth Carolina against the rest of the country
Every count below is read from our state-law data across all 51 jurisdictions, so it moves when the data does. What you will not find here is an average settlement figure: the only one we could compute is a model, and a model presented as a measurement is not a fact.
- 6 of the 51 jurisdictions we track apply the contributory negligence rule, and North Carolina is one of them.
- Its 3 years to file is longer than the 2 years that 25 jurisdictions use. Across the 51 jurisdictions the deadline for this case type runs from 1 year to 6 years.
- 7 of the 51 jurisdictions limit non-economic damages (pain and suffering) in our data and North Carolina is not among them, so an estimate here is not held down by a ceiling we hold.
Comparisons are drawn from the legal levers that actually move a case value, not from closed-case data, which we do not hold. See the full methodology